Wednesday 3 April 2013

Bringing Home the Ashes (part one)






People's remains are a strange phenomenon!  What to keep, what to throw and what to take down the charity shop, (more of that later as we discuss my 75% de-clutter project!).

My mother died many years ago and I suggested to my siblings that perhaps her ashes should be scattered in the same place as my father's.  He died in Warwickshire and my mother in Devon.  No-one seemed to think it was an issue, that it did not matter.  So I took possession of them once the Funeral Directors were going to charge shelf-space for the container.  Mother was lodged with me apart from a spell of wandering when they stayed in my brother's freezer room.  Admittedly my sister-in-law almost mistook them for a new consignment of bird feed!  Mother came back to me.

I rang the crematorium about sprinkling the ashes in the same place as my father's, and they said it would be fine; they would need to be in a new container and there would be a fee.  Then they made it very clear that I would have to stand and watch one of their staff do the sprinkling, I was not allowed!  I closed the conversation and could not think of a plan.  Mother's ashes have stayed with me for a subsequent 10 years!

Having just begun to come to terms with my husband's death over a year ago, I decided that I would send the ashes to the crematorium and they could sprinkle them.  I could visit later.  And then?  The Post Office and the Delivery Services no longer will deliver ashes!

What to do now!  Watch this space....

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